Two

The cool hardness of shaded sand was under his head. Under his back. Under his hands. There was a reason this shouldn’t be so. His eyes drifted open as he tried to remember what it was. The black-haired woman who was not her sat near with her back to a rock and her knees drawn up, watching him. She stirred as his eyes found her.

“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by now,” she said, clinically. “You’re the most willful human I’ve ever met. Though the Fullmetal boy could give you competition.” Her mouth twisted. “Perhaps we’ve been selecting the wrong workers all along.”

Fullmetal… Elric. The little brother. The city. He sat up abruptly, clutching at the sand under him as his head swam and the world swayed in a dizzy circle. Circle.

“Why am I still alive?” He frowned at her. “Did you…?”

She leaned her head back against the broken stone and laughed, sweet and cold. “We can’t do alchemy; only humans can. I couldn’t have interfered in a transmutation if I’d tried.” She left her head tilted back, staring up at the sky. “I just found you afterwards.”

He levered himself up to his knees to look around and stopped as he felt his hands, his arms under him. Shock froze his lungs. He lifted two hands up and watched them shake. “What?” He didn’t recognize his own voice.

She glanced back at him and her bare shoulders shifted with a short breath of amusement. “You were in the middle of the transmutation of the Philosopher’s Stone. What surprises you?” She stood and looked down at him. “Now it’s really goodbye.”

Later he would remember her fingers brushing through his hair as she walked out onto empty sand and away.

End